As promised, I would bounce back with some interesting posts for you to read. I thought I would showcase an instrument that I find particularly fascinating and will feature in my doctoral thesis. I hope you find this interesting and I would like to hear your points of view.
The Reid Reaction Tester can be described as one of the
earliest attempts at neuropsychiatric screening in the Royal Air Force. This device, introduced in the 1920s, helped
to ascertain if potential flying candidates possessed the aptitude for piloting
an aircraft. What is particularly interesting to me regarding the introduction
of this machine was that neuropsychiatrists were not part of the medical
service at this time but psychological theories were prevalent within the RAF
and its medical service. Mental
scientists and eugenicists had been researching the link between intelligence,
coordination and performance from the nineteenth century, and the RAF was
adopting a similar theory in their selection process. Some military historians may question why I
believe that this is a medical device and not just a military selection tool. My answer to that is simple: it is testing the brain and mental capacity
of the candidate. The Reid machine
tested the co-ordination of the brain, hands and feet of potential aviators but
why was this introduced?
Training a pilot for service flying cost thousands of pounds
and was very time-consuming. After the
man had a successful interview, he was subject to a medical examination which
ascertained physical fitness but apart from that, there was no way of knowing
if the man would become a good pilot – if he possessed ‘the right stuff’. It was believed that by measuring his
abilities before training, the Reid Reaction Tester would sort the wheat from
the chaff, thus saving time, money, and lives.
This very argument appeared again during the Second World War when RAF
neuropsychiatrist Robert Gillespie attempted to reform the selection process
using scientific methods. Popular
periodical Flight Magazine stated that in 80% of cases, the
apparatus indicated that the man would become a good pilot, and this was proven
during training.
The apparatus could be described as a ‘flight simulator’. The
candidate sat in a mock cockpit and operated the control of the aircraft. Inside the cockpit were three sets of small
electric lamps: port side coloured red
and starboard green. The examiner would
turn on a set of lights and the pilot would have to manoeuvre the controls of
the aircraft to turn these lights out as quickly as possible. The responses of the pilot were recorded on a
machine mounted on the mock fuselage, and the time taken to execute a
particular command was measured by the length of the line recorded by the
stylo. To illustrate this further, if
you have ever been for an eye examination, many of you will have experienced
the peripheral vision test. You sit in a
dark room with a joystick in front of you and you have to hit the button as
quickly as possible when the red light flashes up on the screen. Practically the same idea! The image below is from the Royal Air Force
Museum’s collection and shows the recording apparatus:
No comments:
Post a Comment